I share this recipe with our subscribers every year around the holidays, but figured I’d share here as well this year, so anyone who wants to make these can! When I was growing up, Baba’s (my grandmother’s) pierogies were the highlight of our holiday feasts. Pierogies are dumplings you can find in places like Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. They’re kind of similar to Italian ravioli or Jewish kreplach.

The recipe for these pierogies has been in our family for who knows how long. And after generations of being passed down, the only place they lived was in my grandmother’s head – no written recipe, just a bunch of experience and intuition. Before I was born, in order to capture this and keep the tradition alive, my father followed her around the kitchen and scribbled down everything she did, complete with illustrations and (approximate) measurements – there were no measuring spoons or cups in sight. Engineer that he is, he wrote it on graph paper, of all things, and even added some jokes in there, filled with his “dad joke” sense of humor. I can see them in my mind’s eye, laughing and cooking in her tiny kitchen in Brooklyn.

Through years of making these, I’ve added some of my own notes, which are incorporated below. Enjoy!!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour (plus some extra as you roll out the dough)
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tablespoon olive oil (or other non-seed oil)
• 5 oz. water
• 2-3 red potatoes
• 1-2 oz. farmer’s cheese
• 4 oz. cream cheese (full fat)
• salt
• salted butter

Instructions

1. Add the flour, egg yolk, olive oil, and water to a large bowl. Mix with your hands, and as the ingredients become combined, knead vigorously until it’s smooth and not lumpy. You may need to add some extra flour or water – do it a little at a time so the consistency is right. The dough should not stick to your hands, but it shouldn’t be dry, either. The dough is such an important part of this recipe and this is the key to getting it just right!
2. Sprinkle some flour onto a kneading board (I do it right on my countertop after a thorough cleaning with non-toxic spray) and continue to knead for about three minutes. Make sure to only add enough flour to make it not stick to your rolling surface, otherwise, it will be too dry.
3. Cover the dough with aluminum foil and let it sit for about 30 minutes.
4. In the meantime, put on a pot of salted water to boil, peel your potatoes, cut them into 1-inch cubes, and add them to the water. Remove them when they’re soft (easily poked with a fork). When ready, drain the water, then add the potatoes back to the pot and return to the stove on low heat to remove excess moisture.
5. Add 1-2 ounces of farmer’s cheese, depending on your preference, and mash with the potatoes. You can taste with one ounce and see if you’d like to add more. The recipe my dad wrote indicates American cheese, but that’s all they had on hand that day. Farmer’s cheese is the secret to the filling!
6. When fully blended, add 4 ounces of cream cheese and mash again. Taste and add salt if you think it needs it.
7. Set the potatoes aside and return to the dough. Take ¼ of it and roll it out into a thin, even sheet; cover the remaining dough. The trick here is to make it as thin as you can, while thick enough to work with and stay together once filled – around 1/16″. As you roll out the dough, make sure to sprinkle flour sparingly if you need it, so the dough doesn’t dry out. 
8. Once you roll out the dough, you’ll want to cut out circles that are about 2.5″ in diameter. You can use a cookie cutter. We use the top of a cocktail shaker!
9. Remove the excess dough and return it to the covered dough. The potatoes and cheese should be cooled off at this point. Take one teaspoon and add to the center of one of the dough disks, then pinch the edges together to seal the potatoes inside, and set aside, ideally on a linen (lint-free) towel, making sure they don’t touch. I keep a small bowl with water, dip a finger, and apply water to the inside edges before pressing them together to help with the seal. You want to avoid water getting inside when you boil them, so the seal is important. You can also simplify the the process by eyeballing the amount of potatoes you need – it doesn’t need to be precise, you just want enough to fill, but not so much that you have to stretch the dough to form the seal (it’s already very thin). 
10. Repeat until you run out of dough or potatoes and all of your pierogies are formed.
11. Add a large pot of salted water to your stove and bring to a boil. Also, set up a large bowl with a collander inside, fill with cold water, and add ice between the bowl and colander. Add about 10 pierogies to the pot at a time and let them boil for 2 minutes max. Remove them with a slotted spoon, place them in the ice bath, and gently stir until cooled so they don’t stick together. After about a minute, remove and place on a linen towel to dry, making sure they don’t touch.